Ivor the Driver a force around town

Ivor-Wynne_file-photo

Back in 1953, the city’s parks board expressed caution about naming local parks and facilities for local citizens, “other than those who have donated the land, and a few hundred thousand dollars to maintain a park.”

Seventeen years later, the board ignored its own advice and renamed Civic Stadium for Ivor Wynne. The outgoing sports administrator was that popular around town.

Wynne was the chairman of the parks board when he died on Nov. 2, 1970, just a day before his 52nd birthday. Exactly a month later, Civic Stadium was renamed in his honour.

Missing from the stadium title was his local nickname — Ivor “The Driver” Wynne — earned for his relentless work with almost all things sporting in Hamilton.

Born in Wales as “Ifor” Wynne, he emigrated to Canada in 1924, and went to Stinson Street School, then Central Collegiate before doing his undergraduate studies at McMaster and later earning his Masters of Education from Syracuse University.

He returned to Hamilton and became Mac’s athletic director for 17 years. Wynne was the force behind the rising reputation of the university’s physical education department, and was named the university’s first dean of students in 1965. He coached basketball and, at the time of his death, had spent 16 years doing colour commentary to the legendary Norm Marshall’s play-by-play of college and pro football games.

In 1952 The Spectator called Wynne “the salesman of the century” after he gained CIAU (the forerunner of Canadian Interuniversity Sport) acceptance for McMaster as a “senior football” school, on a par with the “Little Big Four” stalwarts McGill, Western, Toronto and Queen’s.

In August 1970, Wynne contracted diabetes and that led to the rare blood disease which took his life. Jack Pelech, another big name in Hamilton sport, replaced him as interim chairman of the parks board and it didn’t take long to rename the stadium for the warm, friendly man who was universally liked in the city’s large sports circle.